After the Rowe story broke, Microsoft went into overdrive to mitigate the public fallout, offering to cover the teenager's costs of redirecting traffic from his old Web site to a new one and giving him a free Microsoft Xbox video game console.

It has been six years since Microsoft introduced Windows 95, the operating system that, by "bundling" itself with a Web browser, prompted the government's first antitrust suit against the company in 1997.

Yet ever since that unnerving episode, the young software dynamos in suburban Seattle must have longed for a sympathetic treatment that would present Microsoft's case--in particular, the case Microsoft would most like to see made is that antitrust watchdogs, the courts, competitors, and some economists should stop fretting, lean back, and just let the markets of the information age work their magic.

Participation in the Microsoft Partner Program, which targets software companies offering technology solutions on the Microsoft platform or which use Microsoft products and technologies, requires both independent verification of the products and successful implementation in joint customers.

In filing a petition in federal court, Attorney General Janet Reno said Microsoft had violated an earlier antitrust agreement, and that the Justice Department would seek a fine of $1 million a day in civil contempt charges if the company failed to change its policy.

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